A visit to the Meridian factory

Meridian is one of those companies that seem to go their own way in
audio land, not following others but choosing their own destiny.
Meridian has done more than most to shape the way hifi is at the
moment, and they are still very much at it, continuing to develop new
products and new approaches to existing products. Meridian is best
known for their excellent CD players and DSP loudspeakers. It is also
one of only a few high end companies that can demonstrate a complete
system, from source to speakers, and impress with the results.

So, I was delighted when my friend and I were able to visit the
factory. The lovely new building not only houses the production
facilities, but also the head office and the R&D department. In other
words, the whole of Meridian, with exception of the (much smaller)
office representing Meridian in the US.

We were welcomed by John Bamford, product manager and former editor of
Hifi Choice. John delegated the factory tour to Desmond Ford and
promised to meet us again later. Desmond has been with the company for
a long time and started by showing us the little museum of Meridian
products near the entrance. This immediately made clear that quality
and design have always been of great importance to Meridian. The
company was founded by Bob Stuart, an electronics engineer and Alan
Boothroyd, and industrial designer. And it shows. Every single
product, from the very first one, could be re-released tomorrow and
would still look modern and fashionable. Even the revolutionary Lecson
amplifier that was designed by Stuart and Boothroyd before they
founded Meridian is a small work of art in itself. At the same time it
is also clear that quality has always been of foremost importance to
Meridian. It is very much a case of form following function. We were
fascinated and increasingly looking forward to seeing the rest of the
premises after this.

Next stop is the production floor. Enormous, very clean and very
organised is the first impression. Nobody is in a hurry, and everybody
seems concentrated and relaxed at the same time. There's also a lot
going on, as Meridian actually produce their own circuit boards. That
means that there's a machine putting surface mount components on a PCB
on one side of the floor, while someone is testing finished units at
the other end. 'In this way we stay in control', Desmond explains,
'and errors will be detected very quickly'. Strict and intensive
testing is therefore part of every step.

We had never seen the creation of a circuit board before and I was
fascinated by the whole process. First a sort of silk-screen printing
machine puts tiny amounts of special solder paste with extreme
precision on all necessary places of a PCB. Then a robot places
minuscule surface mount components on the PCB, by just pressing them
into the little blobs of paste. The machine is working at an
incredible speed, making it almost impossible to see what is actually
going on. All components come in reels, a bit like 16 mm film, and the
reels are mounted in trolleys. In that way you can switch from
producing one PCB to another very quickly. After this the PCB’s go
straight into an oven, where the tiny blobs of solder paste melt and
connect the components to the PCB.

But this is not the end of it. Some components still have leads, so
cannot be soldered in this way. On a special workstation all leaded
components are put on the PCB by hand. The specialised workstation
makes this very easy as it presents the correct component to the
person, as well as indicating where it has to be inserted by shining
two small spots of light on the PCB. After this all excess leads are
cut off and the PCB goes through a wave soldering machine.

Finally, there are certain components that cannot withstand the
heating required by the previous steps. This includes connectors and
delicate audiophile capacitors. These are soldered on by hand. At last
the board is ready. Now follows a rigorous testing phase. The board is
either inserted in a special test bed, with a large number of springed
contacts positioned carefully to measure every necessary location on
the pcb, or the board is inserted in a machine that contains a
measurement robot, which puts test probes onto the board at a speed
that makes you wonder how it is possible to be so fast and precise at
the same time. We watched in awe.

Desmond also shows us that most Meridian products nowadays do not
resemble classic audio components anymore, when you look inside. A
power amp still looks reasonably familiar, but most source and control
units are more like computers. There's a power supply and a few common
components, like a DVD-drive or a display, but for the rest
functionality can be added by inserting boards. The bigger cases have
a large number of slots and can be anything from a simple preamp to a
complicated surround-sound processor with room correction and all. All
players use CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drives. Desmond explains that jitter can
now be removed by clever buffering of the digital signal, making the
player completely immune to any influence of the transport. And these
modern computer drives can even re-read a bit of information if an
error has been detected.

We also see the Meridian speakers being built. This is mostly done by
hand. The cabinets are made elsewhere, by the way. It is interesting
to see the innards of such a high quality speaker. The big ones are
constructed from layered wood with a sheet of aluminium in the middle.
Meridian has found that this is the most effective way of preventing
panel resonances. Meridian speakers just need a digital signal as
input and take care of all the necessary filtering and amplification.
There is an impressive amount of electronics in the bigger ones, with
huge power supplies.

Next, John joins us again and we are shown the R&D department.
Meridian has a rather large anechoic room for loudspeaker measurement,
and even a special room to measure the EM radiation coming from a
component. Very impressive indeed. John shows me the main development
area. I expected people with soldering irons surrounded by equipment,
but I am astounded when I see about 20 people behind computers in what
seems to be a large open office space. 'I'll explain later', John
whispers. Some of the other rooms are a bit more as I expected,
resembling the technical department at the place where I work. Except
that there's Meridian equipment everywhere, and of all sorts and ages.
The whole place also seems to be infested with sqeezeboxes, by the way.

Then we are taken into one of the R&D listening rooms. It has been
treated acoustically and very much looks like a place where I would
like to spend a substantial part of my working life. On the floor we
see an 808i reference CD player with integrated preamp, and a power
amp. There's more there, actually, but it has been carefully covered
by John to hide it from our inquisitive eyes. Two small loudspeakers
are positioned on stands. 'Ignore those', John says 'they're not
connected'. So what are we going to listen to then? Well, whatever
produces the music, within a few seconds it is clear that it is
something very special. John is using an R&D test CD full of short
'torture' tracks, and by accident the first one happens to be a
favourite of ours. It's 'Flim and the BBs' and it starts rather
quietly, with a very sudden outburst after that. We knew what to
expect, but are still almost blown off our seats. This system is
seriously dynamic! And no distortion at all, it seems. Music is
reproduces with so much energy and liveliness that we soon (almost)
forget about the system at all.

But wait a minute. Where are the speakers? John smiles, walks to the
wall and pushes a curtain aside. Revealed is an in-wall loudspeaker.
Yes, an in-wall loudspeaker! It is a two way system with an additional
passive radiator, as there's not enough room in such a flat design to
incorporate a real port. The tweeter is a ribbon type and the woofer a
6 or 7 inch metal cone one, with a nice copper phase plug. All very
good quality units, by the looks of it, but still an in-wall
loudspeaker!

John moves the curtain back, making the speaker invisible again, and
tells us, with a big smile: 'Don't tell you wife about this. Once they
know this is possible you will never get away with big floorstanders
again'. We make a mental note and, even knowing what we are listening
to, continue to be amazed by the sound of those speakers. Mind you,
the source is pretty special too, as the 808 is one of the best CD
players in existence. And the amplification isn't simple either, with
active cross-overs and four individual power amps, each connected
directly to one of the drivers. The speaker cables are silver, but are
connected with a cheap little plastic mains terminal block to
compensate for that.

The speed, detail and liveliness of this system is absolutely
breathtaking. Then my friend requests some church organ music. 'I
think there's some organ on this disk' John replies, and proceeds to
search the CD. Soon it is found and he plays it at such a level that
the speakers quite clearly are hitting their end stops. We look at
each other, and then at John, who is sitting next to us, holding the
remote with a big grin on his face. He clearly knows he is driving the
system well over its limits, but seems perfectly happy to do so. A bit
of fun, the Bamford way! Impressive it still is, as the sound might be
distorted from time to time, but is still overpowering. It also shows
that you need not fear abusing a Meridian system. It can take it. No
delicate salon audio, this equipment, but something that can clearly
take a bit of punishment.

We leave the room, our heads still spinning, for a cup of coffee and
some much needed rest and relaxation. Now, at this point I have to say
that they do know how to make a cup of coffee at Meridian. We were
served an excellent cappuccino in stylish English cups on saucers. If
you cannot do it well, why try at all, could be the company motto.

Time for John to tell us a bit more about Meridian. He explains that
Meridian has had two major lucky breaks in the last decade. Firstly
MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing) was made part of the DVD standard to
provide compression for DVD-Audio. And secondly they could take over
their current, wonderful building when the previous owner, TAG
McLaren, went out of business. Desmond had already told us about the
building and both he and John still make the impression that they just
cannot believe their luck. We did see more people walking in the
corridors with this 'Wow, I can't believe this is happening'
expression. And it has to be said that the building is impressive.
'TAG spent millions on it' John says, 'to get their dream building.
And now we have it. And MLP more or less paid for it!'

John further explains. 'To be able to do this as a little family
business in Huntingdon MLP was sold to Dolby. Not totally, Dolby do
licensing. Dolby invent things and then license them. So, Dolby
collect all the royalties for MLP. Dolby true HD, and everything
that comes with it, everything you need to use it, all that is also
made by Meridian. Because Dolby true HD is basically Meridian
Lossless Packing with a lot of extra new bells and whistles'.
'Meridian actually is a software company, up to a point, and it makes
our surround sound processors very special. It's why they cost what
they cost. They do things that other processors can't do. And it's all
our own code. A Meridian CD player of DVD player starts life totally
naked. Even the navigation software is Meridian's. It's not a Philips
chip or a Sony chip. And that I think is quite unique'.
'It's the same with upsampling, it's all done by our own
code. We're in total control of it. When you own a Meridian you can
sleep at night, because when we make it better it will be a firmware
upgrade, free of charge. We're posting it on our website all the
time'. John smiles: 'Most of Meridian consumers are just consumers,
but a few of them are real techy geeks. They've got their own website:
'The hitchhikers guide to Meridian'. They'll come to a show one day
and whisper 'by the way, I'm a hitchhiker'. They are on the website
all day and downloading the latest firmware and experimenting with
room correction. Serious enthusiasts, I love them!'

To finish off this visit we go to the main demo room. In there is a
top of the line 7-channel Meridian system, with a Meridian Faroudja
projector. John starts by playing a full movement of the new
world symphony by Dvorák in DVD Audio format. It is absolutely
stunning. In the R&D room we were still impressed by the system and
the way it reproduced music, but here within seconds I am completely
absorbed by the performance. There is no system really, just music. It
is as close as I've ever come to a real live performance when
listening to a hifi system. And it is loud too. I would guess almost
realistic sound levels, actually! Still, no hint of congestions,
compression or distortion. It really is like being in a concert hall.
Being able to do that with 3 guys playing jazz is one thing, but doing
it with a whole symphony orchestra is something else!

Talking about three jazz guys, after this I ask if he can play
a few tracks of the Oscar Peterson CD
I brought. It's 'We get requests', an old audiophile favourite. Again,
the music is reproduced with such authority and ease that I forget all
about hifi and just enjoy the presence of three fantastic musicians.
All the obligatory details are crystal clear: Ray Brown putting down
his bow, and later singing along with the music. I even have the
illusion to be able to hear the rivets in Ed Thigpen's cymbal, but
that might have been wishful perception.

The only slight disappointment is the new 5 channel mix of Talking
Heads 'Remain in light'. It sounds electronic and unnatural. With this
recording the system just lets you hear far too much of everything
that was done in the studio. It is still impressive, but not completely
convincing anymore. A very, very revealing system then, but utterly
magical with a good recording.

All in all, this has been a fascinating afternoon. It is not often
that we are allowed to see how really great products are designed and
build, and meet the people who are responsible. A big thank you to
Meridian and to John and Desmond specifically. It almost turned me
into a hitchhiker..